


From an Admirer

by FizzingWizard



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:38:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4854983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FizzingWizard/pseuds/FizzingWizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone’s hitting on Kurogane and Fai’s not jealous in the least. Not even a little teeny-weeny bit.</p><p>Post-TRC. Kurofai established relationship but in its fledgling stages, they clearly don’t know how to approach each other yet... but courage and impatience and particularly sake intake are mounting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From an Admirer

A pretty face would never be enough.

Which was what Fai told himself as he watched the blond, sweet-talking bartender pass Kurogane another shot “from an admirer.” The run-down, leaky bar was the only dive in the area that served anything not cut with water, but even so, patrons were scarce. Around happy hour it did see a fair few customers, Giorgio (the silver-tongued bartender) told them, but they were it for the moment, aside from a bald, hiccuping businessman whose tie trailed forgotten in his whiskey glass. And Fai doubted a man whose wife, blessed with unusually strong lungs, had just discovered her husband’s mistress (“Eavesdropping is immoral,” Kurogane had tsked while Fai gleefully almost tipped out of his seat leaning toward the pay phone) held ardent admiration for anything about Kurogane, or even that he had enough cash to pay for his own steady stream of shots.

Fai grinned broad and silly as Kurogane knocked the drink back. “Someone’s popular.”

“Don’t know what you mean,” gruffed his companion, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His brow quirked. “It’s good for you not to be the one ogled for once.”

“Oooh, Kuro-rin. Owch.” So he had noticed that there was ogling going on. In the past and now. _Mucho_ ogling. Fai couldn’t decide if he was surprised or not.

An unexpected flush darkened Kurogane’s cheeks for a moment. He was far too pleased with himself for catching Fai off-guard, the magician thought.

Before he could retaliate with another glib one-liner, a rough thumb grazed his forehead. “Your face is red,” said Kurogane as he moved a few pale gold hairs behind Fai’s ear.

_“My_ face is —” Stammering in spite of himself, Fai rolled his eyes and went back to fiddling with the complimentary tray of peanuts. The one with a red face was _Kuro-tan,_ not him. “There’s no occasion for that. You said yourself, _I_ am not being ogled today. You’re the one with an — an _ogler._ Which makes you the — oglee.”

Kurogane started chuckling under his breath, damn him. Fai’s immature side wanted to sock the guy right in the nose. Then they’d decide whose face was red.

“Excuse me.” The ever-so-friendly Giorgio was back, with his ostentatious red bowtie and simpering How-may-I-be-of-service? smile. Everything in the bar looked damp and rotten from the rain that dripped in through the unpatched ceiling, but Giorgio was crisp and warm like Sunday at a beach resort. Fai noticed with an odd sense of satisfaction that Giorgio’s hair was more of a dishwater blond than gold.

Then he realized Giorgio was addressing him, rather than his new, surly eye candy. “Ah — Yes?”

“Would you be Mr. Fluorite?”

How had he gotten that name? “Indeed I am!”

“There is a young man asking for you at the door. Because he doesn’t look of age, I told him to wait there while I fetched you.”

“Of course. Fetch away, then.”

It really wasn’t that Syaoran looked so young. At sixteen, he could pass himself off for eighteen, or older, if he tried. But as Fai met those honest brown eyes, he knew it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Unless he had a really good reason to lie. Like if someone in the bar were defacing books, or something else truly evil.

“Everything alright?” Fai asked.

“I just wanted to tell you I’ve found us a place to stay,” Syaoran said. Rainwater drenched his cloak and filled his boots. They made a squelching sound as he stomped them on the mat.

“Good for you! Always so resourceful. Where is it?”

“Well, it’s… a little off the beaten path, but on the bright side, we’ll have it all to ourselves.”

“No one to take advantage of three live-in servants, you mean?” Fai smirked as Syaoran made an exasperated noise. Not that many people _could_ take advantage of them. But in that last world they’d just been a little slow on the uptake, working day in, day out for an estate only to find that they wouldn’t be paid because they hadn’t got their agreement in writing.

“If only Mokona could translate written language,” Syaoran sighed.

“Mokona does her best!” piped in an indignant little voice from the depths of Syaoran’s hood.

“And we’re very grateful,” said Fai reassuringly. “So, just where are we hanging our hats tonight?”

Syaoran drew a crude map on a napkin, labeled a square on a hillside “lodging,” and left to return to scouring the local library. Fai held the napkin to the light. “Hmm. Left at the hatter’s, then straight past the… statue of copulating satyrs?”

As he reentered the musty bar, dodging a veritable river that poured out through a crack above the men’s lavatory, he found Giorgio hunched over the counter near Kurogane, foreheads almost touching. Fai hesitated, listening to the low rumble that was Kurogane’s voice when he was content, when he had nothing on hand to draw him away from good sake and the whine of cicadas. The bartender’s thin lips stretched with his open laughter, slender arms stretched across the counter as he murmured in Kurogane’s ear. Aside from the red bowtie, he wore a starched white collared shirt and dark slacks, and for a moment Fai felt as if he were back in the Cat’s Eye Café, watching a much happier, much less complicated version of himself at work across the room.

The heartsick businessman had begun to sob uncontrollably into his jacket, and Giorgio left Kurogane to offer him a tissue and the number for a cab. Fai slipped between a pair of tables and into his abandoned stool beside Kurogane.

“W’zit the kid?”

“Yeah. He found us somewhere to stay.”

“Damn, he’s good.”

“Syaoran-kun has a way with people. They trust him.” Fai drummed on his chin, staring idly at the racks of bottles behind the counter.

“You do too,” Kurogane pointed out. He had another drink, Fai noticed. And it wasn’t sake, so he hadn’t ordered it himself. He sipped it as he jabbed a finger at Fai’s nose. “When you want to.”

“Unlike you, in your scowly lonesomeness.” Fai swiped the drink and sniffed. Gin and tonic. You’d think a bartender could come up with something more romantic. “Though you seem to be on a hot streak tonight.”

“Like I said,” the glass was reappropriated with one deft maneuver of broad brown hands, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Anyway, we should get going. It would be nice to figure out food and beds before Syaoran-kun gets there. And if you pickle yourself any more, I’ll have to stick you in a jar in the pantry with the other preserves.”

Grunt. “Gotta use the facilities first,” Kurogane announced as he pushed back his stool. The ceiling was too low for him to stand straight at full height. He stooped and started to head toward the back, but paused on his way to tug Fai’s ponytail. The brush of knuckles across his neck burned like ice.

Suddenly he was overcome with impatience. Even though he had no idea what he wanted to happen. He couldn’t think of anything to do with his hands. They hung at his sides, long and bony and pale — skeletal, he thought. They itched in his lap. They itched on the hardwood counter. His fringe, too, had it always been this annoying?

He was blowing at silky tendrils and making them dance in the air when Giorgio slid a tall, narrow glass of some zealously orange beverage toward him. A mimosa. Fai let his bangs droop as he turned a questioning eye on the bartender, who had the gall to wink.

“I was told it's from an admirer.”

Fai squinted dubiously at the businessman, who was now passed out in a heap by the phone. He looked back at Giorgio, gave him an appraising once-over. He didn’t look the kinky type, but how could you ever tell?

Giorgio stared back at him as he wiped the countertop with a rag in precise, circular motions. Fai had the sense he, also, was being appraised. He heard Kurogane exit the men’s room. That drew Giorgio’s attention for an instant. He leaned back, tucking the rag into his pocket.

Then he cracked a smile at Fai. With a shake of his head, he muttered, “Must be those eyes,” and moved on to clean another corner.

Kurogane grabbed the back of his stool. “We going or what?”

Fai peered at him brazenly as he drained the drink. Kurogane said nothing, but that lovely crimson streak began to creep back over his ears. Then Fai stretched up, long and spindly, into Kurogane’s space and out, like an ocean breeze. “Follow my lead.”

“Why?” Kurogane demanded, to reassert his role as _"father,"_ Fai thought fondly.

“Because,” Fai brandished the neatly folded napkin. “I have the map.”


End file.
